


harvest

by anonymousAlchemist



Series: The Avenger Zone [4]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, a sidefic for attypf, if you know you know, kill your past for the present, kravitz does a hit, marvel AU, murder tour!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 06:25:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19079338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousAlchemist/pseuds/anonymousAlchemist
Summary: He slides the knife in between the man’s third and fourth ribs. It’s a quicker death than the man deserves. Kravitz remembers the man slapping him across the face when Kravitz was a child. Telling Kravitz that he wasworthless, we’ll turn you into something useful, holding Kravitz’s face too tight between his hands, and Kravitz not knowing that the man was wrong. The man teaching him how to use the first knife he was given.





	harvest

**Author's Note:**

> this is a sidefic for All The Things You Prayed For — read all zillion words of that first, and come back here ;) 
> 
> Or: kravitz is black widow, RQ is hawkeye, and there's a lot of ghosts that kravitz needs to put to rest. 
> 
> Or: me and marywhale referenced kravitz's murder tour before. this is that story.

Raven doesn’t notice Kravitz is gone for a week. This is something she later feels bad about — at least until she tells Istus about her guilt. Istus points out that Kravitz is a grown man and a highly trained agent. If he wanted to disappear without being noticed, he was entirely capable of doing so. Raven then says still, she should have called earlier. Noticed that the boy was being cagey in the weeks leading up to his disappearance. Istus rolls her eyes at that, and, not unkindly, says that Raven’s not his _mom._

That’s later though. In the moment, there’s only the phone ringing, and Kravitz not picking up. She doesn’t think anything of it. Raven’s calling her boy because she wants to go see _Timecop_ and Istus doesn’t, and Kravitz doesn’t get out of the house enough. The house being the new SHIELD apartment unit that he recently moved into after being taken off probation. The move was more of a formality than anything else, considering that it was pretty much an open secret that Raven “Hawkeye” Queen had kidnapped the Reaper agent she had flipped and he was living in her spare room and sleeping on her old futon.

She had seen his rooms in the barracks and they were just… so sad. Kravitz’s entire backstory is so sad. The worst part of it is how he doesn’t seem to realize. She _had_ to kidnap him. He deserved all the handknit sweaters that Istus benevolently piled on him, and all the movies that RQ took him to. He talks more after doing an activity, anyway. Raven thinks that’s probably a good thing. She’s contemplated making him talk to one of the SHIELD psychiatrists but she gets the feeling that would spook him _and_ make him clam up, so she’s been holding off on suggesting it so far.

But if he keeps not _picking up his phone_ , then maybe she’ll do it in _revenge._

The phone goes to voicemail. _Please leave a message after the beep._

“Hey Krav, I’m making you go see Time Cop with me ‘cause Istus doesn’t wanna, just kidding, you can say no if you want to, just kidding to the just kidding, I haven’t seen you since you moved out and I’m missing my best boy, call me back!”

#

He slides the knife in between the man’s third and fourth ribs. It’s a quicker death than the man deserves. Kravitz remembers the man slapping him across the face when Kravitz was a child. Telling Kravitz that he was _worthless, we’ll turn you into something useful,_ holding Kravitz’s face too tight between his hands, and Kravitz not knowing that the man was wrong. The man teaching him how to use the first knife he was given.

Kravitz kills him textbook-clean. Exhibition perfect. He wipes the blood on the man’s suit and tucks the knife back away.

He wonders what RQ is doing. He hopes she doesn’t check in on him.

#

“The Reaper is missing,” Director Davenport says. “You understand how this looks.”

He says it calmly, like the world’s most dangerous non-legendary-actually-real spy hasn’t disappeared off the face of the earth. Raven winces. “Not great, I’m guessing.”

“Not great is an understatement,” Davenport says dryly. His second-in-command coughs and Raven suspects she’s covering a laugh. Lucretia’s going to have to work on her poker face if she wants to be Director someday. There are rumors of Davenport retiring soon, and Raven can't imagine SHIELD without the short, well-mustachioed old man who's been in charge of the agency since its inception. “He stops reporting in to base two weeks after he’s taken off probation, his apartment is completely untouched, and he’s apparently ignoring his partner’s communications, from what you’ve told me.”

“Not to mention that IT has logs of someone combing through the Red Room records which correspond with timestamped security camera footage of Kravitz accessing the SHIELD secure database in D.C.,” Lucretia adds. “It looks _really bad,_ actually.”

_It looks like treason,_ is the statement they’re both circling around. There’s not enough to formally accuse Kravitz yet, because nothing has happened other than his disappearance, but the circumstantial evidence is damning. They've been keeping the man on a short leash. Raven shakes her head.

“Isn’t it too obvious, though?” she argues. “If I were to frame anyone for treason, it would be Kravitz, and there’s no evidence that he’s disappeared, maybe he’s just enjoying having a little more breathing room after _two years_ of probation. I know I would! Anyway, he has _rights._ ”

“Technically he doesn’t,” Lucretia says, not a threat but a simple statement of fact. “We knew he was a flight risk from the beginning. It’s not inconceivable that he’s been playing the long game on us. Red Room operatives were known for their dedication, we have reports of similar missions.”

“We have those reports because _Kravitz gave them to us_ ,” Raven says. “It doesn’t make _sense_ that he would just leave now, maybe if he’s gone, it’s because somebody took him. He’s valuable! Maybe instead of arguing about this, we should be trying to rescue him.”

There’s been a knot of worry in Raven’s stomach ever since Kravitz stopped answering her calls. She’s left him a million voicemails, stopped by his apartment, and he’s just… missing. He’s one of the best in the world. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t be taken, by a well-coordinated team. The only reason Raven isn’t more worried about this is that she had confessed her concerns to Istus and she had told her to not worry so much, that Kravitz was fine. Everyone in the business has their superstitions — Raven has Istus. Istus has an uncanny knack for predicting the future.

If Istus says Kravitz is fine, then Raven believes her. She still _worries_ though.

“Fortunately either case has the same solution,” Davenport says. “We need to find him. Hawkeye, you’re being assigned to a new mission.”

#

He has a list of names written on a piece of notepad paper. It’s dangerous, keeping a paper copy. He plans on burning it after he’s done, but it’s just so _satisfying_, crossing out names. It’s a weakness Kravitz affords himself, because it’s something he’s learned, that doing things because they make you happy isn’t something just for other people; that Kravitz can be happy too.

That’s the gist of what RQ and Istus have been trying to explain to him. That’s what Istus _blatantly told him_ when she caught him at three in the morning, awake and staring at nothing because he couldn’t figure out why he was here. Not here as in _alive_ , here as _in RQ and Istus’s apartment._ There was no reason for them to be kind to him. There must have been some angle that he was missing. She had smiled at him and he hadn’t understood her expression, and she told him that he deserved to be happy. Then Kravitz had given her a confused look and said that she didn’t actually answer his question, and Istus laughed at him.

He wonders if she would still say the same if she knew what he was doing. The non-sanctioned assassination of dozens of former Red Room operatives, so far removed from the quiet, cozy kitchen.

But Istus loves RQ, and RQ tells her everything, down to the last classified drop. So maybe she’ll still like Kravitz. He’d like that, he thinks. It would make him happy.

#

The trick about looking for a spy is in a few things. First, you look for the small tics that each operative has. All agencies have patterns and the operatives within them have routines, and the good ones usually know about their routines and deliberately try to divert from them, creating new routines.

The problem is that Red Room operatives were notorious for being ghosts. They didn’t have any patterns — the Red Room missions had patterns, but it was impossible to figure out which of their operatives they had sent on a mission until you were close enough to see their face, at which point it was too late. It was like they had all the personality scrubbed out of them, was how one of the analysts once put it, and that was pretty close to the truth from what Kravitz has told Raven. And despite Raven’s attempts at teaching Kravitz about things like “personality” and “having personal possessions,” he’s always a consummate professional on a mission.

If someone has taken him, though, that’s a different story. Then it’s a process of elimination. But all the agencies that would have an interest in Kravitz are cut from the same stock. Raven can’t narrow them down any further than she already has.

The second way to look for a spy is to look for the negative spaces. Where are the spots in the world where there should be a person, the unexplained deaths, strange accidents, odd shipping requests. Enough of these, and a pattern emerges. it’s only been a month since Kravitz, disappeared though. A month of running solo missions, of poring through intelligence reports, and there’s still not enough information.

The last way to search for a spy is to figure out their motive.

Presumably, any agency that steals Kravitz wants him for one of two reasons: to neutralize him, or to turn him. Raven knows that both options end the same way: Kravitz sending a distress signal, or him never being found again, his body in an unmarked grave. Raven isn’t fond of this option.

On the other hand, if Kravitz left under his own power, then the question becomes: Why?

#

Kravitz didn’t leave clean the first time. It’s been weighing at the back of his mind, the niggling feeling of _what if someone comes after him._ He’s not the only ex-Red Room operative still in the field. There’s still other assets handlers, lab technicians, a whole circus of bureaucrats and field agents that scattered after the Red Room collapsed. He’s kept tabs on most of them — Kravitz is pretty sure he’s the only one who defected to the Americans, at least out of the other assets. They were all heavily conditioned for blind loyalty.

Most of the other Reapers are still in Eastern Europe, and he knows that it’s only a matter of time until one of his old …coworkers decides that Kravitz is too much of a liability to leave alive. He suspects that they haven’t come after him yet simply because they don’t believe that he’s defected for _real_. Two years is nothing. But what about five? Ten? What about dozens of missions that advance American interests, fulfilled by Kravitz’s hand?

That didn’t bother Kravitz at first. If they came after him, either they’ll kill him or he’ll kill them, and the odds are weighed in his favor. He’s the best — aside from the Soldier, and if they send the Soldier after him, then it’s going to be a different sort of tangle altogether.

(The Soldier is conspicuously absent from Kravitz's list. Kravitz doesn't want to kill the Soldier.) 

But now Kravitz has RQ. And RQ has Istus.

It’s basic psychology. If you have a dangerous target with attachments, aim for the attachments.

#

Fall turns into winter, everything going snow-dusted and cheerfully festive. There are even holiday decorations up at the Triskelion, which always makes Raven laugh a little when she comes in for meetings. Two weeks before Christmas, Raven sits down for a chat with the Assistant Director to talk about the “Reaper situation.”

“What have you got for me, Hawkeye?” Lucretia says, opening a fresh page on her notebook.

Raven hands her a sheath of files. “I think I’ve cracked it.”

Lucretia flips through them carefully. They detail a string of deaths across eastern Europe, all accidents or strange coincidences, a few that are outright murders with no perpetrator yet found. There’s no connection between any of them, other than a single fact: each body description matches the description that Kravitz had previously given of a Red Room operative, and each body is someone that SHIELD would have no excuse to pursue, despite their previous involvement in literal torture.

“Oh no,” Lucretia says, completely deadpan, reading the memo that Raven has written about the connections. “Civilian deaths.”

“A shame,” Raven says, just as deadpan.

#

Agencies proliferate unto themselves. Even if the Red Room is dead, the ideas it was born from still exist, they still infect the new iterations — the KGB, the SVR RF, everything comes from a _lineage_. There’s a saying a few of his handlers used to talk about — eating organizations from the inside out, replacing their agenda with your own. There’s no way to trust that a program no longer exists simply because the letters have been reshuffled. Constant vigilance is the only way to protect yourself.

Or you could just murder every single person even remotely associated with the original program.

Kravitz supposes there is a more elegant solution. A way to neatly nip the whole problem at the bud. If there is, he’s not smart enough to see it.

Oksana twitches lifelessly on the floor. He bends over to close her eyes. They’re already filming over. He wipes the dead woman’s sweat onto his jacket. He checks off another name. Only a few more, now. 

From downstairs, the distant sound of a Christmas party. He wonders what RQ and Istus are doing for Christmukkah.

#

“Are you sending me after him?” Raven asks.

Davenport shakes his head. “We can’t,” he says regretfully. “If we did, then there’s no way we could deny SHIELD involvement.”

“He’s just out there, _alone._ ” Raven protests. “He needs backup! Hell, he doesn’t even need backup, he needs extraction!”

“I agree with you,” Davenport says. “Unfortunately, it’s not something that we, as an American federally-funded governmental agency can provide, and it’s really a pity that we’re not a private citizen who can send him a private message about returning home, as a friend.”

Raven stares at him a moment, and then laughs. “You’re really obvious, Director,” she says. “Who put you in charge of a spy organization?”

The Director cracks a smile, creasing his old face. “It’s really my second career.”

#

Kravitz crosses the last name off his list a day after Christmas. It’s anticlimactic. Alexei is an old man now, retired and living in Argentina, having escaped any sort of legal retribution back in Europe. Kravitz kills him with a pillow over the face, and it’s _easy_, which is the worst part.

Just Kravitz and an old man’s corpse. Kravitz feels very old, all of a sudden. He’s got more in common with the dead man than with anyone currently alive.

He thought he would feel different, being the last one left. But it feels just the same.

He wonders what he will do now. He doesn’t think he can return to America. He’s sure that they’ve pegged him as a defector, or dead. But it would hurt RQ and Istus, he thinks, for them to never know what happened to him. He owes RQ an explanation, probably.

Kravitz doesn’t think he’ll come back to explain anything. But he can… maybe leave them a message? That feels like a good compromise.

For the first time in four months, he turns on his SHIELD phone, the one with the tracker that has RQ’s number pre-programmed in.

There’s precisely seventy-four voicemails on his phone. They’re all from HAWKEYE.

Oh.

#

He climbs through the window two days before New Years. Raven is sitting on the couch watching the news. She studiously doesn’t get up as he climbs through, but pats the couch next to her. She kind of feels like she's interacting with a spooked cat, which isn't an entirely inaccurate description of Kravitz. Kravitz sits down. She puts a telegraphed hand around his shoulder and pulls him in for a hug, a little too tight. She's missed him. She's going to yell at him  _so much_ , later. But for now— 

“You missed Chrismukkah,” Raven says.

“Sorry,” Kravitz says, leaning into her touch. “It won’t happen again.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! 
> 
> if you liked this pls tell me you liked it cause i thrive off of validation (aka, comments and kudos <3) 
> 
> peep me on [tumblr](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com/)!


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